


you'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you

by acetheticallyy (patrickcorbins)



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Home for the Holidays AU, Homophobia, M/M, Marriage, Other: See Story Notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 07:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16849432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrickcorbins/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: The thing is, Eugene almost didn’t come. He shouldn’t have come. Everyone had told him he didn’t have to, he knew he didn’t have to, and yet when it came down to the last minute “buy your plane ticket now or not at all,” he bought his plane ticket now instead of not at all. He knew what his family was like. It would have ended in at least three different screaming matches, one fistfight in the front yard, and everyone disowning each other.





	you'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you

**Author's Note:**

> haha uhhh what’s poppin ladies this idea came to me when I watched home for the holidays with my mom for the first time after thanksgiving and I was like “excuse me gay robert downey jr deserves better than this, thanks” but there’s not really a market for home for the holidays au fix-its in the good year of our lord 2018 so I figured……..sledgefu
> 
> idk no one said my thought process was a logical or good one the point is I heard the line “how’s my real family” and thought of K/3/5 living it up in boston and having a good old fashioned gay thanksgiving. please enjoy.
> 
> and bc it wouldn't be an hbo war fic without it: this work is based entirely on the actors' portrayals of these men from the hbo miniseries 'the pacific'! absolutely no offense is meant towards the real men whatsoever
> 
> (please see the end notes for info regarding the homophobia tag if you're sketched!! I'll let y'all know what's up down there)

Eugene isn’t quite sure why he came back home for Thanksgiving. Some misguided attempt to stop feeling bad for not inviting his parents to the wedding—for not telling them there _was_ a wedding to be invited to in the first place—he supposes. Whatever his reasoning was before he hopped on the plane, it doesn’t matter now; he’s only been at home for fifteen minutes and he doesn’t feel any better about anything, he just feels worse. He doesn’t know how he’s expected to make it two more _seconds_ , let alone two more days.

The thing is, Eugene almost didn’t come. He _shouldn’t_ have come. Everyone had told him he didn’t have to, _he_ knew he didn’t have to, and yet when it came down to the last minute “buy your plane ticket now or not at all,” he bought his plane ticket now instead of not at all.

Snafu had offered to go with him, but Eugene could tell he didn’t want to go. _Eugene_ didn’t want to go, not even when he clicked on the button to buy the damn plane tickets, he wasn’t about to make anyone else come with him. Besides, he knew what his family was like. If Snafu had come with him, it would have ended in at least three different screaming matches, one fistfight in the front yard, and everyone disowning each other.

Come to think of it, that’s probably where the holiday was headed anyway. His brother wouldn’t be getting in until tomorrow afternoon, so anything was still possible.

His brother didn’t even know Eugene was coming, because _Eugene_ didn’t even know he was coming, and that was sure to set him off as much as anything else. It was likely that Edward wouldn’t have deigned to come at all if he knew Eugene was going to be there, and maybe Eugene _should_ have called his voice mail after buying the ticket to say “hey by the way I’m coming by to see mother for Thanksgiving! You can have her on Saturday when I’m gone! See you never!” instead of being petty and deciding not to say anything. But he hadn’t wanted to talk to his brother because his brother had never wanted to talk to _him_ , and he figured it would at least be funny to watch Edward’s face practically split in half when he tried to look civil for the neighbors when he really just wanted to start yelling about how Eugene was probably going to Hell or whatever.

In his childhood bedroom at one thirty in the morning, approximately eleven hours from when his brother was due to arrive, the whole situation seemed a lot less funny.

Sidney wouldn’t even be there because he was spending the holidays with Mary’s family. He wouldn’t have a single buffer between him and his family for the entire next two days, and the longer he thinks about it the more he wants to buy the first red eye to Boston that he sees, regardless of how high the last-minute fee is.

*

“I’m telling you, Mer, you’re going to have to bail me out of jail by the time Saturday comes around.”

“Sledgehammer you know well I’m not gonna bail you out of jail, you’ll sit there for a week and I’ll save money on groceries,” Snafu answers from the other side of Eugene’s laptop screen. There’s humor in his voice, a smirk on his face that only Gene can really discern as loving, but he also knows he’s only half kidding. “Your brother ain’t even there yet, how much trouble could you get into?”

Here’s the thing: Eugene hadn’t gone to sleep until about three in the morning. He woke up at seven to his parents banging around in the kitchen because they were convinced Thanksgiving dinner needed to be started hours before even though it always ended up being done around noon and they ended up eating at one because they didn’t want it to get cold before it was a more respectable time to eat.

His grandparents and aunts and cousins and uncles and family friends he hadn’t seen or talked to for three years had begun steadily trickling in sometime around nine and from then until about eleven thirty or so he’d been relegated to sitting in the foyer taking coats and fake-laughing and pretending not to notice how his relatives’ faces faltered slightly and their voices were just a bit too high pitched when they asked him when he was going to bring a girlfriend home and he responded with a “my _boy_ friend is at home, actually, he couldn’t make it.” He hasn’t quite ventured into correcting them fully and saying that, actually, as of two weeks ago he’s _married_ now, because he’s not exactly ready for the riot of tears and yelling that will likely occur when he breaks the news.

And, really, is it his fault if they can’t be bothered to do so much as notice a ring on his finger? It’s not like he tries very hard to hide it.

“I’m gonna end up killing one of my uncles if they ask me when I’ll finally find a nice girl one more time, I swear,” Eugene says. “It’s like they don’t even register that you exist.”

Snafu’s laughter rings out, tinny, through his laptop’s terrible speakers. “As far as they’re concerned, I don’t.” He doesn’t sound torn up about it; just matter-of-fact, like he would sound if he was telling you that the sky was blue or the grass was green or that there was no point in waking up before noon on the weekend, Sledgehammer, good lord, why would you wanna be awake that early if you have nowhere to be? (“That early” being nine in the morning, a perfectly respectable time to be awake, he thinks.)

“I was a glitch in the matrix for the one weekend you brought me home and as soon as I left, they re-entered their own reality and gladly forgot all about me.” Eugene remembered that weekend. It wasn’t… _bad_ , per se, but it was, well…yeah, it was bad.

His parents had _said_ they were okay with his being gay, and he had believed them. And they had never given him any reason to believe that they didn’t, either, up until the point where he finally brought a boy home. Up until the point where it was real. Up until the point where he was _happy_. And then it was all tense silence and forced-politeness and hesitant stares when he and Snafu had gone to the same bedroom at night.

Suffice it to say, it was the reason he didn’t really come home all that often anymore.

“God I can’t wait to come home,” he says on a sigh.

Snafu politely does not bring up the fact that he never had to go all the way to Alabama in the first place, doesn’t even look like he’s thinking about saying I told you so, even though he probably is. “Me neither. Leyden’s been driving me crazy for the past two days, won’t shut up about how he can’t believe he isn’t gonna get to eat any of your famous Sledge family dressing because you had to be a mama’s boy about everything.”

Eugene rolls his eyes. He’d had to endure that lecture from Bill himself for about three full hours after he had made the decision to visit his family for the holiday. “You haven’t told him that I left some in the fridge for him yet, have you?”

“Nah, figured I’d let him sweat it out.”

“You’re impossible,” Eugene says, but he’s smiling as he says it. It says a million things— _you’re impossible and I miss you. You’re impossible and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you weren’t here. You’re impossible and I wish you_ were _here, right now, even though I’m glad you aren’t because I don’t want you to have to deal with this. You’re impossible and I love you_.

“Yeah well _you_ married me,” Snafu responds, playful. “Whose fault is that?”

“Yours,” Eugene answers. It’s only been two weeks, but this is already a familiar refrain, one he knows the steps to as well as he knows that the sun rises in the morning and the sun sets in the evening and Snafu doesn’t like pickles on his sandwiches, but he won’t ask restaurants to take them off because he knows Eugene wants to steal them. “I seem to remember you very nearly sobbing when you asked me. How was I supposed to say no to _that_?”

Snafu snorts at the accusation, but a slight flush rises in his cheeks just the same. “Only thing I’d cry over you for is if you left without taking that damn dog of yours.” All lies. The dog is _theirs_ , and Eugene knows for a fact that Snafu was very near tears the day that they got her, too. Also, he has the dog on his lap right now, as they’re speaking, and he’s scratching behind her ears while leaning over every so often to press a kiss to the top of her head. Also, he almost cried over Eugene not even two days ago, when they woke up early so Eugene could catch his flight and his eyes caught on the ring on Eugene’s finger, like he still wasn’t used to seeing it sitting there. Also, he’s done that pretty much every day since the wedding happened.

“Weeping, really,” Eugene continues, ignoring Snafu’s response. “Hysterics, you could say. I seem to recall there was a very big, drawn out speech that you couldn’t get even get through because—”

“Al _right_ , Jesus,” Snafu says, as if they haven’t done this a thousand times already. As if this isn’t something they should have already gotten tired of but instead it leaves them giggling every time. As if he isn’t currently laughing through his halfhearted protest right now. “ _Maybe_ I cried a little bit, but it’s only because you took so damn long sitting there with your mouth hanging open, I thought you were gonna stroke out on me.”

Eugene remembers him saying something similar when he had asked.

_“You havin’ a heart attack on me, Eugene?” A watery laugh obscures some of the consonants. “That murmur finally get ya, or you gonna answer me here? Shakin’ in my boots, cher.”_

_A catch in the throat that makes the words come out louder in some places, emphasis shifting from syllable to syllable. “You never wear shoes, you goddamn hillbilly.” A laugh. A yes. A ring. A thousand I love you’s. The promise of a thousand more._

He doesn’t know how long they just sit there, looking at each other with soft expressions on their faces. It’s probably an embarrassing amount of time. He’s glad his friends in Boston are usually late for everything, or else they would surely be there on the other side of the screen ripping into the two of them for being such big losers.

Except for perhaps Burgie, who would probably just look at them with this half smirk on his face like he wanted to say something but thought that he didn’t really have a leg to stand on, not when everyone’s seen how he _still_ acts around Florence, even after being married for four years.

 _God_ , Eugene wishes he were back at home being teased by his friends instead of having tense conversation with what felt like half of the city of Mobile. Of course, as luck would have it, this is when he hears his mother call from the kitchen that the food is ready, and the good mood he’s managed to build for himself in the little bubble around his computer screen immediately sours.

He checks the clock—one thirty in the afternoon. He knew it.

“Well,” he says. And that’s it. Eugene just sits there. He’s not exactly pressed over getting down to eat dinner with his family _right this minute_ , especially when he knows his brother is down there.

It was no coincidence that he practically ran up the stairs with the excuse of needing to make a call as soon as he had heard the sound of his brother’s car in the driveway. No one had stopped him—Eugene’s not even sure anyone has _told_ his brother that he’s here yet, which is probably going to be a problem but better to have it happen during dinner when they have to sit there and be nice to each other for at least forty-five minutes than to have Edward blow up and back right out of the driveway the second he got here, he supposes.

Not that he would have minded that turn of events. Their mother would probably be upset, though. Then again, he isn’t quite sure if he would care, at this point.

“Well,” Eugene says again.

Snafu laughs at him. “You gotta go, cher?”

“I’m debating sneaking out the window,” he admits. “But yeah, I gotta go. Tell everyone I said hi?”

“Tell ‘em yourself. Call me when you’re done, they’ll wanna talk to you.” Snafu’s lips curl up at the corners. “And I wanna make sure you didn’t actually get arrested for killing one of your uncles.”

Eugene rolls his eyes. He _probably_ won’t get arrested tonight. Probably. If he does, it would be his brother’s fault anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll try not to go to jail because you’ll just let me rot there,” he responds. “Our vows mean nothing to you.”

“Hey, there was nothing in our vows about bailin’ you outta jail, just said I had to love you no matter what. I think I can manage that while you’re locked up.”

If it was possible for Eugene’s eyes to get stuck in his head from rolling them too much, it probably would’ve happened around the second week he and Snafu had started dating. It’s mostly fond, mind you, but regardless.

“Well, wish me luck I guess,” Eugene finally says, taking his computer off his lap and swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. “Love you.”

“Je t'adore, Eugene.”

Eugene takes another moment to look at Snafu before he disconnects and goes downstairs. Snafu never ends Skype calls first—never ends them at all, really. One time Eugene forgot to log out because he was in a rush and when he came back to his bedroom the call had been running for six hours and was just showing an empty kitchen with a dirty cereal bowl on the table.

He doesn’t complain, though. Especially not times like now, where it lets him spend a few quick moments watching Snafu laying on his side on their bed back in Boston, arm curled around their little Chihuahua Stevie’s body as she swats at his face with her paws to try and pull him closer to lick at his nose. Every time her paws reach out to make contact, Snafu pulls back slightly to avoid them before moving his face in closer to hers to egg her on. She pretends not to care that he’s there, turning her nose in the air in the opposite direction, before moving quick to pounce on top of Snafu’s chest and shower his face with little puppy kisses. When Eugene finally makes himself disconnect, the last thing he hears is Snafu’s full, carefree laugh while he tells Stevie how smart she is.

Eugene isn’t so sure that pouncing on him when he clearly let her win is an accurate measure of her intelligence, especially not when the other morning she had slammed into the wall jumping off their bed to get her breakfast, but far be it from him to tell _Stevie_ that. Nurturing environments, and all that.

He tries to keep some of the warmth that the image of Stevie using Snafu as her own personal playground leaves in his chest with him as he makes the walk downstairs into what is sure to be the single worst family dinner that he has ever had the displeasure of attending.

*

It’s only been ten minutes and Eugene already wants to either kill someone or lock himself in his room until Friday evening rolls around and he can finally leave. Or both. The way things are going right now, it seems like it might actually be both. Snafu is going to be _insufferable_ if Eugene really does get arrested tonight, which he was mostly joking about at the time but now he’s not so sure.

His brother hasn’t done much of anything, besides pretend like he’s the only one keeping this family together, as usual, and try to make Eugene’s eyes melt out of their sockets just by glaring at him, as usual. At least he’s not preaching. It’s a good night for him.

No, that’s not the issue at all, the problem is actually that Eugene’s aunt won’t stop showing him pictures of her coworker’s daughter and his great-aunt keeps talking about her friend’s granddaughter’s roommate, who is apparently single and pursuing a PhD in neurology. He wonders why any of that is supposed to appeal to him. He wonders why, especially after he spent two hours this morning reminding them that yes, he was in a very happy relationship, _thank you_ , anyone is even trying this bullshit in the first place. They usually just ignore that he has a dating life at all and call it a day.

He makes an escape to the kitchen under the pretense of wanting a second helping of his great-aunt’s cranberry sauce. If any of them remember that he holds a particular dislike for his great-aunt’s cranberry sauce, they don’t question him on it. The only other person in the kitchen is his mother, fussing over the napkins and cutlery and whether she should baste the turkey again so it doesn’t dry out.

“Mom,” he says, setting his plate on the counter and turning on the faucet to wash his hands just so he has something to do. “ _Why_ do Aunt Astrid and Great-Aunt Maudie keep showing me pictures of women I have no relation to?” Pictures of women _they_ barely have any relation to?

She doesn’t answer right away, just keeps moving things around on the counter like anyone is going to care how the dishes are arranged in the kitchen when they can’t even see inside from the dining room. When she does, it’s like she doesn’t understand what he’s asking in the first place. “What do you mean, Gene, I’m sure they’re fine women.”

“ _Mother_ ,” he tries again, shutting off the faucet and leaning with his back against the sink to face her. She finally stops messing with the plates on the counter and looks at him. “Why does everyone in this family think I’m suddenly in the market for a girlfriend?”

“Oh, you know.” She flutters her hands around, avoids looking him in the eye. “They’re an old-fashioned bunch, honey, it doesn’t mean anything really.”

Oh _Christ_. This couldn’t really be happening. He had expected this from his brother. He had expected this from his aunts and uncles, even. But even with as much as he knew his mother quietly didn’t approve, he hadn’t quite expected _her_ to go and pull something like this. “Mom? Am I being ambushed for a reason?”

She lets out a big, put-upon sigh, as if _she’s_ the one that everyone is quietly and persistently trying to _convert_ at Thanksgiving dinner. “Now, Eugene.”

“Now _what_ , mother?” His hands are him fists under his arms where he has them crossed tightly over his chest. This absolutely _cannot_ be happening. Why was he even here?

She sighs again and settles him with a look, acting like he’s somehow being unreasonable for not wanting to be whored out by his family when he has a husband back at home. Not that any of them know about the husband part specifically, but they at least know that there’s _someone_. They don’t usually stoop so low.

“Eugene, you don’t really expect to be with that boy forever, do you?” And there it is. He hadn’t really been expecting that, but he supposes he should have. It was naïve, he guesses, to ever have thought that everyone would just keep quietly disapproving as usual and let him visit three or four times a year without much incident.

“Actually, yeah, I do,” he starts. But before he can get much more out, he’s cut off by the sound of someone else walking into the kitchen with a derisive snort.

“He hasn’t told you?” His brother. Great. As if this conversation needed his intervention to get any worse. “They went and got married already. Surprised you couldn’t tell, he’s been flaunting that stupid ring around all afternoon.” _All afternoon_. As if Edward had even known that Eugene was there for more than ten minutes. He’d been able to pinpoint the exact moment Edward had realized his holiday was ruined by the way his eyes narrowed and the number of wrinkles on his forehead increased by five.

And, actually, _thank you very much_ , he had been trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible so he didn’t have to have this conversation. Everyone else had made his life easy by doing a very good job of pretending it wasn’t even there, he’s not sure why his brother had to be any different. Well, okay, so he has a pretty good idea why, but _still_.

Their mother gasps. “Eugene?”

There’s no reason for Eugene to feel this pit in his stomach for not telling his mom that he’s been married for two weeks, but it doesn’t stop him from feeling it anyway. God, he _hates_ this.

Rolling his ring around his finger with his thumb, he answers. “Two weeks from yesterday.” Without knowing why, he says this while looking down at his shoes. This was, he knows, the wrong move to make, especially with his brother in the room. It makes it look like he thinks getting married to Snafu is anything less than the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

He lifts his chin to look straight at his mother, ignoring his brother entirely, but it’s too late to change his posture to look as defiant as he feels. His brother’s already taken his opening and the toxicity of his laughter seems to echo through the kitchen. Eugene wouldn’t be surprised if everyone at the dining table could suddenly feel a distinct chill fall over the room.

“You can’t even look at us, can you? This is so pathetic. I have _friends_ in Boston, you know.”

And? Is that supposed to matter to him?

“Cool, well I have a husband in Boston, so.”

That was the wrong thing to say, according to Edward and his mother, which means, really, that it was absolutely the _best_ thing he could have possibly chosen to say. His brother storms out of the room, presumably to cause a scene by telling the rest of the family what they likely already know but are just pretending that they don’t before claiming that he can’t stay here anymore and peeling out of the driveway without even doubling back to slam the front door closed like the asshole twelve year old he’s pretending to be. His mother just stares at him.

A slam of the front door tells him that he got that part wrong, at least, but the rest seems to check out.

Eugene doesn’t think there’s much for him to say, here. His brother’s gone, he’s said his piece, there’s no reason for him to defend himself.

He turns back to the sink to begin cleaning off his plate. The damage has already been done, there’s no reason for him to go back out there and pretend like he’s having a good time. He’ll rinse his things, go back up to his room, stay there for the vast majority of the next thirty or so hours, and go home, where he will perfunctorily send his parents cards for birthdays and holidays and _never_ set foot in Mobile again. His mother breaks up that perfectly planned future by clearing her throat.

“Well I hope you’ll at least send me photos.”

He freezes reflexively at the shock of her statement. “You don’t actually want those, mom.” She _doesn’t_ , he knows that— _she_ knows that.

His answer makes her give another one of her frustrated, performatively put-upon sighs. “Gene, honey, I can’t change. I don’t know how.”

He gives a tight smile that he knows she can’t see and finishes rinsing off his plate before taking his time shutting off the water and drying his hands. “That’s the thing, mom,” he finally says as he crosses the kitchen to leave the room and go upstairs. “I can’t either.”

*

The first thing Eugene says to Snafu when he picks up the Skype call is “how’s my real family doing?” He’s sure he looks worn down and exhausted, face drawn and eyes tired like he hadn’t slept in six days—like he’d been gone for years rather than minutes. Turns out that fighting with your homophobic relatives—however seemingly civil that fight may be—and then staring at your bedroom ceiling for fifteen minutes processing everything before you boot up your laptop to Skype call your friends back in Boston makes you really, _really_ tired. Who knew.

Snafu’s only indication that he knows how Eugene must be feeling right now is a soft, sad smile, and Eugene is grateful for that. They can talk about it later, they _will_ talk about it later, because he feels like he needs to, but right now all he wants is to talk to the people that love him and forget about the past forty-five minutes.

“They’re all here,” Snafu says. “Twenty minutes _late_ , as usual!” He turns his face away from the screen and shouts this last part at the room behind him, presumably where everyone else is currently hanging around. It makes Eugene smile.

“You wanna talk to ‘em?” he asks, as if Eugene can’t hear at least three of their friends running towards the room Snafu is in, asking to talk to him. Eugene knows that, without hesitation, Snafu would absolutely tell the rest of them to fuck off, if that’s what he wanted; he knows that, without any questioning necessary, his friends would leave the room and let him have a minute, if that’s what he wanted. It’s a nice feeling, to have that silent acknowledgement that you’ll be accommodated no matter what or why.

Eugene just smiles and nods a yes, already feeling better just by hearing his friends clambering over themselves and trying to squeeze in tight enough to all see him on the screen at once. He can hear Burgie’s voice over the speakers, unsure of where he is exactly, say “Jesus if he was here you would suffocate him, he’s not going anywhere.”

The response that comes after that is “shut it, Burgie, you’re just saying that because you can’t see and I’m not moving,” and after that, in an exasperatedly fond voice: “you are all whole entire grown men in their mid-twenties, stop acting like children.” Eugene can already feel the tension melting away from his shoulders.

Bill manages to muscle his way in front of the camera, something which Snafu appears to be marginally displeased about, if the slight glare—more performative than anything, really—he sends Bill’s way when he gets squashed against the side of the couch is any indication. “Gene! You beautiful bastard, you didn’t tell me your left your dressing in the fridge for me!” Bill shouts, plate piled high with aforementioned dressing in his hand.

“He’s already eaten about half of it,” Andy chimes in, “and we’ve only been here for fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, I pulled it out of the fridge to see what it was, and he almost ripped my arm off taking it away from me? I think he can sense its presence.”

“Dude that’s nothing, he tackled me onto the kitchen floor when I tried to get some for my plate, I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.”

“Hey, I can’t be blamed for any of this, you _know_ how much I love that dressing.”

“…Isn’t it called stuffing?”

“Yeah if you’re putting it in a _bra_ , Jay, Jesus Christ.”

Eugene lets them argue with each other like that for a little while, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he is still there on the other side of the screen. It is, perhaps a bit surprisingly, incredibly therapeutic.

Snafu catches his eye in the middle of all the chaos. He sends Eugene a look and Eugene sends the same look right back. It’s a look that says _can you believe these assholes?_ but has enough humor in it to betray the fact that neither of them would have it any other way.

*

Eugene doesn’t go back downstairs for anything after saying goodnight to his family in Boston, and Friday comes without much fanfare. The rest of his extended family has left, leaving just him and his parents in the house, and he assumes they don’t want to bother themselves much with talking to him, anyway. He makes sure to stay in his room until he’s too hungry to stand it anymore before he goes down to breakfast. That ends up being ten fifty-two in the morning—a little over eight hours until he gets to go _home_.

When he does go downstairs, he grabs a muffin off the counter without looking to see what kind it is and fills a glass with water from the fridge before turning around and going right back up the stairs. He’s debating whether or not he should be That Kind of spouse and request another Skype call when his phone rings on his bedside table. The name on the caller ID makes him smile; at least if he is That Kind of spouse, he’s not the only one that is.

“Hey what are you calling for, everything okay?” He knows it probably isn’t an emergency, at least not unless Bill went and cracked his head open on the oak tree in the backyard again while they were playing football after dinner, but he figures he should ask anyway. It’s not often he gets a call that isn’t accompanied by video. And, you know, Bill cracking his head open on an oak tree wasn’t exactly a one-time deal. It’s a very real possibility.

“What, something’s gotta be wrong for me to call you?” comes Snafu’s response, amusement clear in his voice. “Just wanted to know what time your flight was getting in today.”

Even though his flight time has been burned into his brain because he’s been holding a silent countdown since the minute he stepped off the plane that brought him here, Eugene brings up his flight information on his laptop and double checks. “Uh, my flight is set to leave at seven fifteen, so I should be back around nine thirty? Well I guess ten thirty, with the time difference. Barring any unforeseen disasters, that is.” With the amount of snow that’s bound to be on the ground in Massachusetts, he doesn’t have high hopes for a quick and painless flying experience. It’ll be a miracle if his return flight is only delayed by an hour.

He can hear Snafu groan over the receiver. “Jesus, why did you pick such a late return flight?”

“Aw, do you miss me Merriell?” Eugene teases. “It was the earliest I could get without having to empty my entire savings account just to pay for a ticket. Besides, you’ll hardly notice I’m gone, I’m sure Florence is gonna drag you all down to every department store in the area to go Black Friday shopping. I might even be home before you are.” It’s a joke but it also really isn’t. Florence has been known to shop until she _actually_ drops when it comes to the holiday season.

Like, honestly, last year she forgot to eat for too long and had to sit down on one of the armchairs in the Macy’s fitting room until Burgie came back with something for her to put in her stomach.

“ _Please_ don’t remind me,” Snafu says. “She’s already been on our asses for the past two hours askin’ when we’re all gonna be ready.” As he says that, Eugene can hear her talking loudly in the background, presumably bullying Andy and Eddie into helping her rouse the boys into getting up and ready for the day ahead.

And, really, Eugene is inclined to agree with her. It’s noon over in Boston right now, they really should at least be fully awake if not already ready to go. Although he wouldn’t put it past them if they were taking so long just to minimize the amount of time that they had to be out with the rest of the Black Friday masses. He’s been Florence’s personal bag boy before, and although she’s a fine woman and he loves her to death, she doesn’t care what you think is heavy. She _will_ keep piling on the gift bags until your spine breaks and she _will_ break your spine herself if she catches you trying to sneak a peak at what’s in them.

“Wish you were here, cher,” Snafu says when Eugene just laughs at him. “Maybe if you got here this morning, she’d let me off the hook for the newlywed reunion.”

“Now you know that’s not true,” Eugene answers. “ _At most_ she’d give us an extra hour before we had to be out the door.”

He hears a shout over the receiver that can only mean that if they don’t leave the house _now_ , they’re not allowed back. Even though most of them have keys and also, technically, none of them live there anyway.

“Right,” Snafu says with a resigned sigh. “I’ve been threatened to be kicked out of my own house unless I leave _right this minute_ , and I wouldn’t put it past her either. Let me know if your flight gets delayed?”

“Of course. Let me know if you get trampled to death?”

“Yeah, sure thing, Gene,” he laughs. “Love you.”

“Je t’adore, Merriell.”

As Eugene hits the button on his phone to end the call, he really wishes he could see Snafu’s face right now. Bad as his French is, it never fails to make Snafu go all soft when Eugene says something as simple “I love you” in a language he holds so closely to his heart. It hardly even matters how many times Eugene says it, he gets the same reaction every time. It’s a testament to how much Snafu loves him that even after three years his still-butchered French is received with warmth and affection rather than rolled eyes and a tired “I’ll kiss ya when you learn how to pronounce your vowels properly, Sledgehammer.”

*

To Eugene’s immense surprise, he’s allowed to leave without much fuss. He walks down to the family room at six after spending most of the afternoon pretending to do anything related to the work he had due this weekend and avoiding his mother whenever he came downstairs to get something to eat. His parents, surprisingly, don’t say a word about anything that happened the day before.

For once, he is allowed to sit in peace on the couch and idly watch the news while his father asks over his graduate school studies and he waits for his cab to arrive to take him to the airport—it’s relatively painless. His mother is more or less ignoring that he’s there, except to fuss over the collar on his jacket and glance worriedly in his direction every so often. That aside, it feels strangely normal. Or, at the very least, as normal as anything gets when he’s here.

When the cab gets to the house, honking to announce its presence, his mother gives him a perfunctory squeeze around the shoulders before disappearing into the kitchen and his father holds the door open for him, following him out onto the front steps.

He expects a short goodbye and stiff wave as he gets into the cab, but instead his father says, “Eugene. This boy of yours, do you love him?” Eugene can’t seem to find his voice. He just nods. “Does he love you?” He nods again. “Then I’m happy for you both,” his fathers decides. “I think I really mean that.”

It’s not the best thing he could have heard, really. But it is a start.

*

When he arrives at the airport, his flight has only been delayed by half an hour. The snow should clear up by then, he is assured, and after checking in he sits down in one of the seats by his flight’s gate and pulls one of his textbooks out of his bag to get caught up on his studying before his number is called and he can board the plane.

As much as Eugene needs to study, he doesn’t absorb any of the information. It’s only six thirty in the evening and he’s already so exhausted from the past two days that he feels like he could sleep for _weeks_. He gives up on the reading and resolves to study harder for his next exam if he ends up failing this one for being too distracted to pull out his notes for more than five minutes at a time. Instead of reading about genetic inheritance or the different phylum of the animal kingdom, he leans his head back against his seat and closes his eyes for a minute, making sure to take careful note of the sounds around him so he doesn’t fall asleep and miss the call for his flight entirely.

To his surprise, the delay only lasts for twenty minutes, and if _that_ isn’t a surprise for a flight to Boston in the middle of winter. It looks like he might be on time after all.

Before boarding, Eugene sends a quick text to Snafu, letting him know that he’s boarding now and that he should be home around the same time, if only twenty or so minutes later than he had originally anticipated. His message is met with an “I’ll wait up” and a heart emoji and he feels something in his stomach settle.

*

Eugene thinks he sleeps on the plane. Maybe. It’s hard to tell, because he doesn’t _feel_ like he slept, and he’s pretty sure he was conscious for most of it, but also he feels like he blinked and suddenly they were descending. Time passes both faster and slower than usual when you’re in an airplane, and it’s impossible to tell which one it is at any given point in time. If liminal spaces truly exist, he’s sure airplanes must be a prime example of the phenomenon.

When he called his friends from the back of the cab on the way to the airport, they had offered to pick him up when he arrived, but he had politely declined and insisted on getting a cab back to the house. They were at the tail end of their day’s shopping trip, and he could already hear in their voices how tired they felt. Needless to say, it really didn’t end up being much of an argument.

When the cab meets him at the airport pick up lot, he all but skips to the door. Thirty minutes, give or take a few depending on how bad the traffic is, and he’ll be home, _really_ home, with people that love him and a house full of mildly embarrassing candid photos that his friends took at his wedding and a dog that he knows will come crashing into his knees the minute he crosses the threshold.

The closer he gets to home, the longer it seems to take.

When the glow of his porchlight comes into view, Eugene undoes his seatbelt and fumbles around for his wallet. He may have only been gone for two days, but that was two days too long, and he wants to cut down on the time it takes him to get inside as much as possible, even if it only results in two more minutes.

He pays the cab driver, apologizing for his haste, and seems to throw the door open before the car even fully comes to a stop. On his way out of the backseat, he manages to get his bags caught a little bit between the tire and the car’s metal frame, but with a sharp tug he’s jogging up the steps to his front porch and putting his key in the lock.

When he opens the door, all of his friends are gone and only one light in the living room is on: the floor lamp next to the big, ugly armchair that neither Eugene nor Snafu can bring themselves to get rid of because, despite not matching the rest of the house _at all_ or being particularly nice to look at by any stretch of the imagination, it’s the most comfortable piece of furniture they own. And besides, Stevie likes to sleep there.

Eugene drops his bags in the entryway and finds that Stevie isn’t the only one curled up by the light of the armchair. Snafu sits sprawled across the squashy chair, head resting on one of the arms and legs dangling over the other; Stevie takes up residence at the very top of the backrest. Neither of them seems to notice that he’s arrived.

“You know that chair is a recliner, right?” Eugene whispers, squatting by the chair and carding his fingers through Snafu’s hair to wake him up gently.

Snafu blinks his way into consciousness, squinting to bring Eugene into focus, as close as he is. “Hm?” is his brilliant reply.

Eugene can’t help but laugh a little, even though he’s sure he can’t possibly be looking like the picture of consciousness at the moment, either. “You’re impossible,” he says, but he’s smiling as he says it. It says a million things— _you’re impossible and I missed you. You’re impossible and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if you weren’t here. You’re impossible and I’m glad you_ are _here, right now, and I want you to stop me whenever I think about doing something stupid like this again. You’re impossible and I love you_.

Snafu doesn’t respond beyond smiling sleepily up at him and bringing a hand up to his cheek. Eugene rolls his eyes and slides his arms underneath Snafu—one under his legs, the other just under his upper back—to lift him off the armchair and into their room. Snafu makes a slightly murmur of protest, but it’s lost in the fabric of Eugene’s shirt. He doubts that if he were to put Snafu down, Snafu would be able to stay upright anyway.

Behind him, he hears Stevie rustle awake, finally taking notice of his presence in the house. She hops off the back of the chair and stretches out by dragging her front paws down the back of Eugene’s legs. He’s just happy it’s winter time and he’s wearing pants—she’s been known to leave marks when she does that.

He supposes he should at least try to train her to stop, but he was never the one to train the dogs when he was younger for a reason—he can’t do it. The dog whines and cries and looks sad when you try to yell at it, and he’s incapable of dealing with that. Snafu can’t, either. So, Stevie continues to stretch out on people’s legs and they continue to wince when it happens but smile brightly and seem to forget all about it when she looks up at them with her big dumb puppy eyes and wags her tail like she’s never been happier before ever in her life.

When he gets to the bedroom, Eugene debates just dropping Snafu unceremoniously onto the bed and laughing when the movement jolts him awake and he has to scramble to avoid falling off the bed or knocking anything off the bedside tables. He doesn’t—decides to set Snafu down gently instead and watch the features on his face settle as his breath evens out and his arms curl around the pillow under his head—but it _is_ a near thing.

Stevie comes up beside Eugene and wags her tail, tapping her paws on the side of the bed for permission to jump up. He whistles lowly to let her know it’s alright and watches her rev herself up before she jumps. The revving herself up doesn’t seem to have helped, because she still gets stuck halfway up and has to claw herself the rest of the way onto the mattress. Stevie may be a good dog, but she’s not very smart when it comes to depth perception.

He supposes he should shower, wash the stale air of the plane off, before he gets in bed. He doesn’t, but he supposes.

Instead, he changes into pajamas, flips off the bedside lamp, and slips under the covers. Snafu doesn’t move at all, any previous traces of consciousness, however fleeting and foggy, already gone. Stevie snuffles a little from where she sits in between the pillows and lifts her head to blink at Eugene as he settles in. She moves her head so she’s a little bit closer, ears flicking whenever he exhales. Eugene closes his eyes and breathes deep the familiar scents of home.

Tomorrow, he will wake up to the sun streaming weakly through the cracks in the curtains on the windows, the snow outside making it seem somehow both brighter and darker outside than it actually is.  He will attempt to sit up and stretch sometime around eight thirty or nine, and Snafu will grumble and wrap his arms around Eugene’s waist to try to keep him in place. Eugene will concede, if only for a few more moments until Stevie realizes that one of them is awake and starts begging for her breakfast. He will get up and do his regular morning routine and valiantly try to study in the living room but get distracted by looking at all the pictures hanging on the walls, like he always does, like he still can’t believe that this is what he has now.

One or all of his friends will call him, ask if he wants to meet up for lunch or something, and before he can answer they’ll be inviting themselves over, telling him not to worry to get anything ready because they know he’s probably still tired and pretending to read through one of his textbooks, and they’ll let themselves in with a key around noon. He’ll pretend to kick them out if they get too loud and pretend like they have to start fussing over him because he had _one bad day_ at his parent’s house, but he won’t, and they’ll know he’s joking, anyway.

They’ll spend most of the day like that, reenacting their own family Thanksgiving two days after the fact with cold leftovers that they’re too lazy to reheat because “ _Jesus_ , Eugene, you only got one microwave? I’m not dealing with this, cold sweet potatoes it is.”

Later, when everyone has gone home and it’s just him and Snafu in the house, he’ll have to talk about the truly horrible holiday he had, but it won’t matter as much now that he’s home. There’s a hurt there that probably won’t ever leave, but it doesn’t seem to be the type that’ll fester. He’s with people he loves now, people that love him back, and it seems like his father at least is _trying_ , and that’s enough for him.

He’ll spend the night playing music in the kitchen and trying not to burn dinner because Snafu has pulled him in for a dance and time doesn’t seem to exist anymore. He’ll go to bed and wake up and do it all over again.

He’ll be _happy_. He’ll be home.

**Author's Note:**

> ayyyy that sure was a journey, huh?
> 
> if you're here regarding the homophobia tag:  
> -we out here with some good old fashioned southern homophobia  
> -basically his family like Quietly doesn't approve and tries to hook him up with a lady  
> -his brother is slightly more vocal about his disapproval than the rest of them, but no slurs are said and it does not get violent! I'm not that kind of bitch
> 
> if you're here bc you read the whole thing:  
> -thank you! I hope you liked it!  
> -I haven't edited this yet properly bc my eyes are burning from looking at it the past two weeks, so please forgive me for any mistakes you may have found, I promise I'll fix them in time
> 
> other housekeeping things:  
> -the title is taken from "the very thought of you" bc a, I'm a sappy bitch and b, it's a very prevalent song in the movie  
> -this fic is rated T for teen bc idk how rating works but my heart said it wasn't a general audiences type of fic  
> -they live in boston bc that's where gay rdj lives in the movie and I can't be bothered to change it
> 
> thanks for sticking with me guys, hope you had a good time!! please leave some kudos and a comment or two or five and share it with your friends if you think that's what it deserves


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